Author: ferylfiles

Kindness is:

1. making sure my kiddo had the gas money she needed to get to and from and around Seattle last fall.
2. making sure I had help with cat care when I had to be in Seattle.
3. words of encouragement.
4. hard truths told with love to prepare for what was ahead.
5. Sunshine smoothies, Papa Murphy pizzas, and Graze gift certificates to afford me a little respite and more time.
6. buying jewelry and art when it helped make things a little easier for our family.
7. grocery deliveries and front porch care packages.
8. meals.
9. cards and letters.
10. scrubbing the stove top and dusting when I couldn’t.
11. helping decorate for Christmas even if it was just a little and it was really, really hard.
12. missing a milestone birthday so your husband could cook meals for three weeks for one of his best friends at a really vulnerable time.
13. driving in an electric vehicle during really windy, cold weather to make it in time for Christmas and spending the whole day on a gauntlet/quest, then making delicious food and watching movies, bringing light and joy.
14. showing up and showing and showing up.
15. hugs.
16. words and music of encouragement.
17. making the best cottage pie so that a little family could have their trip to Ireland after all.
18. providing a space to remember.
19. making a space to forget.
20. making the time, making the trip.
21. being a safe space to laugh and cry and yell.
22. cleaning my car and making sure my oil was changed.
23. watching stand-up comedy with me to make sure I laugh.
24. sitting with me in silence or listening to me talk at length.
25. being a safe harbor.
26. holding me to account.
27. encouraging me.
28. washing my dishes, sweeping my porch, mowing my lawn.
29. walking with me in my joy and sorrow.
30. extending grace, especially when I’m at my lowest.

For all of these and more than I can write or speak out loud, I am so grateul for kindness, for without it, I would not be able to function, let alone be here. Thank you.

I’m not going to come at you with une explication de texte of a Keats poem. Beauty for me is in the surprising places, in the weird, the unexpected, and it’s always best when shared.

I remember the first time Bryan and I went to Paris I got to watch his face as he turned the corner in Notre Dame and looked up at the rose windows. That first look. The way his breath caught. And we got to relive it all over again when Mary joined us. Some of my very best memories–sharing beauty with my beloveds.

Today, I got to join friends, helping with one stage of a landscaping project. In order to get rid of grass to create a space for more plantings and stepping stones, they put down compost, created a red brick border, and then we put down wet newspaper, layering it like shingles. I caught a photo of this stage. It looked to me for all the world like a modern art installation or a tile mosaic work. This snapshot in time is beautiful because it represents time with friends, potential of the future, and the strangeness of the color and texture out of a perceived context.

For me, beauty is never perfection, it’s a captivating, delightful surprise that makes me feel better than before I experienced it. That’s the kind of beauty for which I’m most thankful.

Today is November 11th–Veterans Day, Armistice Day. This is the anniversary of the end of World War I. Memories are a tricky thing. I am both thankful for them (which this gratitude list is steering me toward) and terrified, horrified, and saddened by them. That is the nature of maturing, I guess, being able to see both, the nuance, the layers. I wish it were simple. Happy. Sad. Yes. No. Off. On. Like switches. But no. It’s all of it all at once all the time.

I’d like to share a poem from the British poet, Siegfried Sassoon, whose work captured the zeitgeist of the soldiers’ experiences and the postwar sentiment in many ways. Here he recalls who and how he was prior to the experience of war and who he became afterward.

Memory

When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the carolling meadows into June.

But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
O starshine on the fields of long-ago,
Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends.

~Siegfried Sassoon

Yes, I am thankful for memories. I treasure them. I remember the before time and celebrate, and I know who I am now and I mourn in equal measure. It just is.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with books and reading in the past several years. For someone who has been an avid reader in times past, this was really puzzling and painful. I can remember being a teenager and staying up well past midnight on a school night reading a Mary Higgins Clark mystery or tearing into a romance novel I’d found at the public library. Reading for pleasure has been a big piece of my identity so to have that go away felt like a mental amputation in some ways.

Busy-ness, the need to be productive, the chanting voice telling me I’m lazy if I sit and read all contributed to leaving books on the shelf. Piling on some major life events and I couldn’t concentrate. I would buy books, check-out books, pull books off the shelf and they stacked up on my nightstand and I didn’t read any of them. And the pile of books was another reminder of my failures. Shame is never a great, sustainable motivator.

Sometime in March a friend gently suggested reading something lighthearted and easily accessible just to get into reading again. I had gotten my public library card several years ago and got the Libby app on my phone so that I could listen to audio books while working on the river rock projects. I’m on my phone a lot because in my darkest, loneliest hours, I can connect with friends and loved ones in an instant. It isn’t quite the same as their being here, but boy it sure helps. I thought to myself, hey if you’re already on your phone, check out a book from your Libby app. You can read a couple of pages, Bec, and then flip to IG or FB as you like, but at least you can read a little.

So I did. I’m currently two thirds of the way through my 28th romance novel this year–lighthearted, guaranteed happy ending (read that as you will), and I am particularly fond of ones with unconventional and quirky female leads and witty dialogue. I’m not looking to knock out the have-to-read-before-I-die literary greats out of a sense of should. That shoulding and shaming are toxic and I hate it. I’m reading for pleasure again. And I love it. My current favorite author is Minerva Spencer (pen name) who has been a criminal prosecutor and history professor, too.

I’m thankful to love books again. Romance novels are fun. I’ve enjoyed them since I was a teenager. They’re lighthearted, sexy, and sweet and I could certainly use a little of all that right now.

(And if you want an apologia for the genre more erudite than mine, my kiddo will set the record straight.)

My dearest friends,

Thank you. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for sitting with me in silence. Thank you for loving me despite my very human, very flat sides. Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for feeding me when I was hungry. Thank you for holding me close and hugging me. Thank you for listening when I talk and talk and talk. Thank you for encouraging, challenging, pushing when I need it the most. Thank you for your patience and grace. Thank you for making me a better version of myself. Thank you for loving me through all my versions so far. Thank you for making this life such a rich one.

Love,

Becci

PS https://youtu.be/3W33TY6Oasg?si=wmiT0C5Ixv2wL3S0